Steve Freeman of the Republican Socialist Alliance and the Left Unity Party draws on the revolutionary democratic political tradition in England, linking the Levellers, the Chartists and the Suffragettes. He outlines its strengths compared with the social democratic and economist political tradition of Labour and most of the British Left sects. Steve argues that Socialists should be championing the revolutionary democratic tradition today.

Westminster does not look or work any better from the inside or the outside. In May 1991 Tony Benn MP proposed fundamental reform. He introduced the Commonwealth of Britain Bill in the House of Commons, intended to make Britain a federal republic. The current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn MP seconded the Bill. The Bill’s first hurdle on the parliamentary road to a republic was to get permission from the Queen to submit it to the Commons. Then there has to be majorities in the Commons, Lords and then finally with the royal assent the Bill becomes law.Continue reading “THE COMMONWEALTH OF ENGLAND”

Steve Freeman (Left Unity Party and RISE) has been conducting a campaign in England and Wales, along with members of the Republican Socialist Alliance, to get socialists to understand the significance of the Scotland’s ‘democratic revolution’ and the need to break away from the British Left’s traditional unionist politics.Steve has fought consistently to try to make the LUP an anti-Unionist internationalist party.

One of the consequences of the LUP leadership’s failure to adopt this course of action during the Scottish independence referendum was the loss of nearly all their Scottish members. Now that a bigger Left unionist pole of attraction has emerged in Jeremy Corbyn, the LUP is faced with the loss of most of its remaining members to the Labour Party. This confirms that the LUP leadership’s Left unionism is a reflection of that of the Labour Party and its accommodation to the UK state.

Here are three letters Steve has written in the pages of Weekly Worker.